How Idaho Got Its Name (and Why Nobody Knows What It Means)

Nobody has proven where the name Idaho comes from or what it means, even though a U.S. senator told Congress in 1863 that it meant “the Gem of the Mountains.” That translation stuck so well that it’s practically the state’s nickname. The trouble is, nobody has ever shown that any Native language used the word that way.

The day Idaho was almost Montana

Start with how the name got onto the map, because that part is well documented. In 1863, Congress was creating a new territory in the northern Rockies. The bill that passed the House called it Montana.

In the Senate, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts moved to change it to Idaho. A senator from Oregon backed him up, according to the floor remarks quoted in James Hawley’s 1920 History of Idaho: “Montana, to my mind, signifies nothing at all. Idaho in English signifies ‘The Gem of the Mountains.’” Idaho won. The territory was created in March 1863, and Idaho became a state on July 3, 1890.

Notice what the senator didn’t say: which language the word came from, or who told him what it meant.

A name that was already floating around

By 1863, the word was already in the air. Here’s what the record shows:

• It was the name first written into the bill that created Colorado Territory, before Congress swapped in Colorado instead. The U.S. Geological Survey’s record for Idaho says so, and so did Idaho’s territorial controller in 1885. There was also an Idaho Springs in Colorado.
• A steamboat named Idaho was built in 1860 to run on the Columbia River between the Cascades and The Dalles, according to two pioneers Hawley quotes.
• In 1861, the Washington Territory legislature named an Idaho County, before Idaho Territory existed.

A pioneer named George B. Walker later claimed he was the one who suggested Idaho for the new territory, at a meeting in Pierce City in 1861, after seeing the name on that steamboat. That’s his account, written more than 30 years later. He said he’d had an article printed in the Owyhee Avalanche around 1875, and that another pioneer, Gilmore Hays, backed it up. We haven’t seen that article.

So what does it mean?

That’s where the record runs out. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1905 book on American place names called Idaho “an Indian word of unknown meaning,” and that’s still the most honest answer. Here are the leading ideas, and how they stand up:

“Gem of the Mountains.” This is the 1863 Senate version. It’s the best known by far, but it comes with no source. Hawley, whose own book has the phrase in its title, still repeated it as the agreed meaning. But he also noted that “no such expression has been found by ethnologists in the dialect of any of the tribes of the Northwest,” which he took as a point for the Arapaho idea below.

“Sunrise mountains.” The poet Joaquin Miller said the word meant something like “Lo, light!” and described an Indian guide in Nez Perce country shouting it at dawn. A writer quoted in 1885 dismissed that as coming from “the fertile imagination of the poet.”

An Arapaho or Kiowa Apache word. A Colorado gold rush veteran named Fred Campbell told Hawley the word was Arapaho. Separately, the Smithsonian’s Handbook of American Indians (1907) lists “Idahi” as the Kiowa Apache name for the Comanche, and the USGS record notes that “some think” Idaho came from it. That’s the most solid-looking lead, because the word is really on record. But none of the sources we read explains how a Kiowa Apache name for the Comanche ended up on a territory in the northern Rockies.

You may also have heard that someone simply made the word up. We’ve seen that story, but we haven’t yet been able to check the records it’s based on, so we’re not repeating it as fact here.

The upshot is that Idaho’s naming day is well documented and the word itself isn’t. The paperwork shows exactly when Congress picked it. What it means is still an open question.

Sources & further reading

• James H. Hawley, ed., History of Idaho: The Gem of the Mountains, vol. 1 (1920), pp. 27–29. Quotes the 1863 Senate debate, the 1885 booklet by territorial controller James L. Onderdonk, Joaquin Miller’s “sunrise” theory, Fred Campbell’s Arapaho theory, George B. Walker’s claim and W. A. Goulder’s memory of the steamboat. Also notes that ethnologists hadn’t found the word in any language of the Northwest tribes.
• GNIS feature 1779783, Idaho (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record’s history note calls Idaho an “Indian name of unknown meaning,” mentions the Kiowa Apache theory, says the name was first proposed for the territory that became Colorado, that it went to a county in Washington Territory in 1861, and gives the statehood date, July 3, 1890.
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 164. “An Indian word of unknown meaning.”
• Frederick Webb Hodge, ed., Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part 1 (1907), entry “Comanche.” Lists “Idahi” among the names other peoples used for the Comanche, marked as the Kiowa Apache name and credited to James Mooney’s 1896 report.